Age: 39
Occupation: Associate professor, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary; Tier II Canada Research Chair in Computational Neuroscience
Wilten Nicola’s job is to figure out exactly how the human brain works.
“It’s amazing how little we know about the brain,” says Nicola. He’s one of the country’s leading experts in computational neuroscience — a field that combines physics, mathematics and computer science.
He develops models of how neurons and neural circuits (groups of neurons) perform the complex operations that dictate human behaviour. He aims to translate those discoveries into real-life devices like computer chips and computational software — an effort that has already produced several patents and a spinoff company.
As a kid, Nicola spent a lot of late nights playing Nintendo; he was also very good at math. He did an undergraduate degree in mathematics at the University of Toronto, immediately followed by a PhD at the University of Waterloo and then a post-doc in the United Kingdom.
In 2019, he arrived in Calgary to start the Nicola Computational Neuroscience Lab at UCalgary. There, Nicola and colleagues try to understand how the human brain does all it does using only about 20 watts of energy, the same as an old light bulb. Those answers might help them build smarter, more energy-efficient artificial intelligence.
“We can actually get to the point where something like ChatGPT wouldn’t take gigawatts,” he says.
In 2025, the company Nicola co-founded, Synaptrain Technologies Inc., which develops neuromorphic chips (processors that can mimic the brain and perform energy-efficient operations), was selected to join NATO’s prestigious accelerator cohort.
Nicola has received more than $2.4 million in funding and his lab’s impressive publication record has established Calgary as an emerging centre for computational neuroscience. He’s also father to two young daughters.
He’s motivated to solve problems that he believes are solvable.
“It’s curiosity. That’s what drives me.”
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